AMD 4700U brightness setting not working + fans always high

I have a new HP Envy x360 ay003nd, which has the latest AMD Ryzen 7 4700U apu and a 1920x1080 13" touch screen.

I installed Ubuntu 20.04 using USB stick, chose to erase drive completely (no dual boot) after verifying using “Try Ubuntu” that everything works. I already performed updates via settings.

During tryout, I noticed Settings > Power > Screen Brightness the slider has no effect, the screen is always at max. Night mode on/off also has no effect. The quick buttons (fn) work just fine, popping up for volume, brightness etc. But the quick buttons have no effect for brightness (the popup shows the sliding bar changing, but no effect).

After installation, same, brightness settings have no effect on actual brightness.
How can I debug this?

I did not mess with drivers at all. This is just a brand new full installation, without any modifications.

Also the fan(s) are constantly running, quite high, even though while I am typing this on Firefox with only 1 tab open, all 8 CPUs show activity between 2-8% sometimes going into 12-15%.
No other application opened after boot. I do not know the temperature, since sudo sensors-detect + YES to every question did not detect ANY sensors. Perhaps because its too new?

Anything I can do about the high fan activity?

Because of the fan activity and the annoying high pitch that comes with it, I am even considering returning the laptop, but it would be a shame since there is no alternative at this pricepoint e1000 (incl 21% VAT in my country).

edit: hardinfo shows:
Screenshot from 2020-07-02 23-03-13
While charging, 88%

Also:
Hibernate and suspend don’t seem to work. Suspend turns of display, nothing else, hibernate shows screen lock. Nothing else happens.

hi @zilexa, it’s a kernel issue with the new AMD 4000 series CPUs. The issue is usually fixed by upgrading your kernel 5.6 or 5.7 for hardware better performance. :slight_smile:

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Thank you, I had Googled last night but couldn’t find this information. Now Googling about kernel issues with AMD 4000 it seems you are right, although some people even face issues with 5.7 and need to wait for 5.8, I would like to try to upgrade my kernel.

But I couldn’t find out how I can do that safely? :disappointed:

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I followed the instructions carefully, downloaded:
headers-generic
headers-all
module-generic
image-generic

Is this error something to worry about? I am afraid to update grub and reboot now…

Setting up linux-headers-5.8.0-050800 (5.8.0-050800.202006282330) ...
Setting up linux-headers-5.8.0-050800-generic (5.8.0-050800.202006282330) ...
Setting up linux-modules-5.8.0-050800-generic (5.8.0-050800.202006282330) ...
Setting up linux-image-unsigned-5.8.0-050800-generic (5.8.0-050800.202006282330) ...
I: /boot/vmlinuz.old is now a symlink to vmlinuz-5.4.0-40-generic
I: /boot/initrd.img.old is now a symlink to initrd.img-5.4.0-40-generic
I: /boot/vmlinuz is now a symlink to vmlinuz-5.8.0-050800-generic
I: /boot/initrd.img is now a symlink to initrd.img-5.8.0-050800-generic
Processing triggers for linux-image-unsigned-5.8.0-050800-generic (5.8.0-050800.202006282330) ...
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools:
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.8.0-050800-generic
modinfo: ERROR: could not get modinfo from 'da903x': No such file or directory
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/zz-update-grub:
Sourcing file `/etc/default/grub'
Sourcing file `/etc/default/grub.d/init-select.cfg'
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-5.8.0-050800-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-5.8.0-050800-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-40-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-40-generic
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-5.4.0-26-generic
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-26-generic
Adding boot menu entry for UEFI Firmware Settings
done

Should be ok.

If the subsequent boot does not work then reboot and press escape or shift key to display grub … use advanced options to boot with the older kernel.

Thanks, reboot went ok. Screen Brightness can now be changed but change is not persistent after reboot. Not a big deal.

Suspend: screen turns off, nothing else. I have to force a reboot.
Hibernate: screen turns off, nothing else but I can touch a button to turn screen back on, login screen is shown.
Fans: still seem to run high when all I do is run Firefox with just this website. Not sure if this is different in Windows 10 though since I didn’t want dual boot, I only booted the first time just to register the device with HP assistant and did a complete erase during Ubuntu install :innocent:

Guess it will have to do for now & wait for the next kernel update.

There are weekly 5.8 releases until linus says its stable.

Do you know if I as non-developer can do anything to contribute to the kernels? Provide logs of hardware scans or something. Especially for laptops to run smooth I don’t think we can count on HP/Dell/Lenovo/Acer to provide all that is necessary.

The best advise I can offer here is to ubuntu-bug linux the issue and ask just this question.

Ubuntu-bug will collect various logs and upload to launchpad. The Canonical kernel devs can then advise better how then to proceed to forward this info to the linux kernel devs.

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Unfortunately, running that command right after reboot doesn’t work (btw creating a screenshot of it is problematic).

fyi for anyone else with AMD Ryzen 4000 series the bug is now reported (fresh install, did not update kernel, ran ubuntu-bug linux and do need to install new kernel now and perform lots of actions to provide the team with more info. Will do so.